The sound of Destiny June 12, 2005

What can I say? I’m a sucker for advertising and overplayed tunes, which goes some way to explaining why I have most of the theme tunes of the anime I watch! It does get particularly annoying when the song isn’t actually that good, I hate it when I first hear it, but ten episodes later, there it is playing on iTunes!! Agh!!

So, having gotten the ridiculously catchy Full Metal Alchemist, School Rumble and Sergent Keroro theme tunes, I am now looking for the Tsubasa end theme and it is only be a matter of time before the latest SEED Destiny theme gets in too. ‘I wanna go to a place…” by Rie Fu (who I’ve just realised was actually in London for a UCL concert this year), is a sickly slow ballad with the odd English phrase inserted. I actually don’t like it that much, but the damn thing is growing on me. I didn’t think much of the second opening and ending themes either (‘Pride’ and ‘Life goes on’ respectively), but I soon had them playing repeat on my iPod!

Being populist anime for the masses, Gundam SEED Destiny features a great number of catchy Jpop hits that aren’t actually that good, yet penetrate your conciousness due to overplay! That’s not to say they’re all bad. The first end theme, ‘Reason’ by Nami Tamaki, was outstanding and TM Revolution had another good hit with ‘Ignited’. Stellar Loussier’s image song, ‘Shinkai no kodoku’, inserted in several trite places, has grown on me a lot too.

Of course, I had a similar experience with the original SEED. I loved most of the songs (‘Believe’ and ‘Meteor’ still give me goosebumps whenever I listen to them), but I hated some of the others. Yet they all get constant airtime on my iPod! As a result, there are some..er..questionable tunes on my iPod, which makes shuffle play for parties interesting!